Also, egg shortages are from Avian flu. Americans are uneducated and unsophisticated, believing someone can wave a magic wand and make food prices come down, when wages and supply must go up to accomplish this (price levels vs inflation). They also have no appetite to understand market consolidation being a root cause contributing factor of supply shortages or pricing power (depending on your view on the topic).
Americans are uneducated and unsophisticated, believing someone can wave a magic wand and make food prices come down,… when wages and supply must go up to accomplish this…
Government wields a magic wand that can make this happen. Americans aren’t dumber than other people. The President in the U.S. is the front person for “government” and asking why the President hasn’t accomplished something is one of the ways we put pressure on our leaders to lead.
> Government wields a magic wand that can make this happen.
What wand would government wave to make food prices decline in a short period of time? Cattle herds are at the lowest level in 73 years due to costs related to climate change (which influences beef prices), and the government isn’t going to mandate vaccination for poultry to stem Avian flu contagion (leading to flock culling, further intensifying the supply death spiral; this influences eggs and poultry meat prices). The majority of coffee comes from Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Indonesia; it can only be commercially grown in California, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico in the US. Show your work to support your assertion.
If you vote for someone who tells you they can make something cheaper they can’t actually make cheaper, and you don’t understand the how and the why, you are not a smart voter.
The vast majority of the world’s population falls into this category:
If you vote for someone who tells you they can make something cheaper they can’t actually make cheaper, and you don’t understand the how and the why, you are not a smart voter.
Your premise is wrong. There are lots of smart people who make dumb, emotionally based decisions in voting and other aspects of life.
…. in a short period of time?
?
What wand would government wave to make food prices decline in a short period of time? Cattle herds are at the lowest level in 73 years due to costs related to climate change (which influences beef prices), and the government isn’t going to mandate vaccination for poultry to stem Avian flu contagion
The discussion was about oligopolies and their pricing power. Now you are changing the topic by talking about things that don’t have to do with oligopolies and their pricing power.
I suggest you are not in a position to call other voters dumb.
I suggest you don't understand the problem besides "oligopolies are the culprit," which is not supported by the evidence. Ag consolidation is a factor, but not the sole factor, nor one this administration will take action on. The supply side will remain unresolved, and the voter will remain angry and upset about it.
They also have no appetite to understand market consolidation being a root cause contributing factor of supply shortages or pricing power (depending on your view on the topic).
The person you responded to talked about oligopolies and their pricing power. If you don’t think that is the problem then why respond with the above? Argue that oligopolies are not the problem. Don’t shift the discussion later on like you did.
I responded with what I did because complex problems do not have simple solutions. It is not "oligopolies are the problem" or "oligopolies are not the problem"; it is "the problem is multifaceted, here are potential actions that can be taken to solve for the complex problem, the likelihood of success, second order effects, etc." Also, if voters do not understand the problem, and keep voting for people who lie to them about the cause of the problems and the solutions, success is impossible (because federal policy is mandatory to solve for this, and federal policy is a function of election outcomes). Discussing this nuance is not "shifting the discussion," but broadening it to be accurate and thorough; to expect a simple yes or no answer is unreasonable, and to do so is to double down on both being factually incorrect and ignoring the complexity of the problem at hand. The system is failing (affordable food, food security), due to multiple components: ag consolidation and voters are two of those components, but not the only components that require improvements to encourage an improved system outcome.
I hope this helps communicate my mental model and thought process on this problem space.
OK, oh Smart One. What do we do? I'm guessing the answer is along the lines of "There's nothing that can be done about these artificially created conditions. They just are. So please die quietly, you plebes." Correct?
You are conveniently forgetting that the plebes are subsidizing the status quo via their taxes. Corn subsidies. Chicken tax. These are not laws of nature and they can be repealed.
> I'm guessing the answer is along the lines of "There's nothing that can be done about these artificially created conditions. They just are. So please die quietly, you plebes." Correct?
No, not at all. I would suggest this administration maintain its monopoly busting stance Lina Khan demonstrated at the FTC [1], in concert with the DOJ [2]. I would suggest removing ag subsidies for operations over a certain size [3], and target subsidies towards smaller operations (not necessarily family farms, but simply more, smaller operations to optimize for competition and resiliency over efficiency and profits). I would suggest directly subsidizing production capacity increases that had to be proven and maintained to receive subsidies (government supported price floors, if needed), as well as fund increased biosecurity policy and implementation (to prevent supply shocks). I would suggest strong labor and worker protections to drive up wages much faster (versus the slower rate they are accelerating ahead of inflation currently). But, this is not policy that was voted for, or what conservatives will deliver on, so it is moot.
> You are conveniently forgetting that the plebes are subsidizing the status quo via their taxes. Corn subsidies. Chicken tax. These are not laws of nature and they can be repealed.
"The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent." [4] Agree laws are mutable though.
Increase and protect supply, increase wages, decrease consolidation. Solving for one is insufficient, solving for all three is required for the economic system to reach food security equilibrium at scale.
Be careful what you wish for. You're basically buying compliance with the status quo with those subsidies and rule structures that stomp out the little guy (not just in farming but in manufacturing too).
If the hand ain't feeding these people they have no reason not to bite it, though with the way elections are going these days maybe the gig is already up.
On the contrary, you have to directly subsidize the "little guy" because they are unprofitable otherwise vs scale, but their value is such that you have to tip the scales with subsidies to enable their ongoing existence. You're internalizing the positive value not otherwise captured. Existing subsidy structures are what have encouraged "get big or get out" [1] in ag, hence the need to transform those subsidy structures to encourage supply chain resiliency and reserved capacity, at the cost of efficiency and scale. The last administration was making progress on this (without the subsidies I mention) [2].
Progress to improve systems of this scale takes time, and many will be unhappy with how long progress takes. Can you convince the electorate to keep voting for you while you try to fix it because it'll be worth the wait? Based on the evidence and the latest election cycle, I would say no after a preponderance of said evidence.
I'm saying that those subsidy structures are what give the federal government's tentacles a good grip on anything in the flyover states. If you have an interest in micro managing these people (which you clearly do) then it is in your interest that the grip remain tight.
It's really easy for you to keep ten BiCo's from dumping hazmat, over using fertilizer, running emissions noncompliant tractors, using illegal labor, etc, etc. It is much harder, much more expensive and much more politically messy to enforce your will to an equal degree upon say, a thousand medium and small businesses. And doubly so if the bigCos are dependent upon a bunch of paper pushing and box checking to qualify for subsidy in order to be profitable at all and the medium and small businesses aren't.
So if you have strong opinions about the exact details of how the beans are farmed (or whatever, the beans are metaphorical) it's in your interest to keep these agricultural economies dominated by big business and on the government teat.
How do you suggest providing the necessary support to otherwise unprofitable, distributed agricultural operations without creating the relationship you mention? I admit the federal government has incentive to potentially micromanage, and in some cases, they probably should (PFAS contaminated sludge as fertilizer comes to mind, which has contaminated tens of millions of acres of farmland in the US). A balance must be struck between fiscal policy and recipient compliance to (hopefully reasonable and data driven) ag policy imho.
There were no shortages during COVID. Only a bunch of panicked buyers clogging the smooth running supply chains. Prices had to rise to quell the behavior or the whole system would collapse.
What happened afterwards is massive inflation from the federal government printing enormous amounts of money into existence, so as the supply chain caught up, prices had to stay high to keep companies afloat after their costs rose.
There's huge corporations on both sides of these deals. Tyson Chicken has a 22% market share and Walmart has a 23% share of the grocery market. Practically neither is going to be able to bully the other. The little guy? To some extent sure, but distributors exist too and Sysco probably isn't getting bullied around either.
Food doesn't grow in a vacuum. I buy a lot locally and it's also more expensive, but they're open about it. Everything costs more. Pesticides cost more. Fertilizer costs more. The animal feed cost more. The drugs cost more. Labor cost more.
We seem stuck in some weird inflationary cycle between inputs and outputs going back and forth on increases. Maybe that's normal, I've not lived through a time like it that I can remember.
Is the consolidation of food companies and them artificially driving up prices to increase their profit margins the actual reason? I'm asking because I don't know. In my general experience that doesn't happen very often. They strive to keep their margins the same as a percentage of the cost. So this means the margin is a larger dollar value but as a percentage it's about the same. This would point to something else causing an increase in the supply costs. This also gets magnified down to the consumer because the retailer is still going to strive to keep their same profit margin percentage as well.
One thing that I suspect is that labor costs are going up. I understand people feel that wages aren't keeping up with inflation but wages are also going to continue to drive inflation. One thing that's always struck me as strange, is when I was young I remember food co-ops being a thing and farmers selling direct to consumers through the co-ops or other farmer markets. Those prices were always significantly less than what you would pay at the stores. There was still big box stores that could keep low margins. Walmart still existed large grocery chains existed, etc... now anytime I see a local farm stand or a farmers market or any co-op-based thing the prices far outpace what you get at even the most boutique grocery stores. Often times a lot of these farmers markets are simply selling repackaged goods from these grocery stores too.
I suspect the drive for all of this is that we have artificially inflated our food price at the supply level and it is now trickling down to everyone. The massive amount of subsidies we pay out to farmers and the massive amount of money that is spent to artificially keep prices high and the tariffs that are issued against imports of foreign foods all drive these crazy price increases. The fact that farmers feel like they need new tractors every few years and that big companies like John Deere have betrayed their customer base by blocking right to repair and the government has done nothing. That seed companies have taken over the agricultural industry and want to license the use of seed instead of selling it. And if you've ever engaged in one of those license agreements for seeds woe be unto you if you try and take a non-licensed seed because you will be sued.
I think if we want to really address the food price problem we need to start fixing some of the core agricultural problems. Cuz I don't believe it's with the food brands themselves it starts much earlier in the chain.
> In my general experience that doesn't happen very often.
Pumping up prices is exactly what large corporations seek to do once they have a large market share. If possible, lowering costs at the same time. Matt Stoller has an article explaining how Walmart did this from the 70s through to this century: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/walmart-americas-food-gov...
I dont know either.. but I can say that in some extractive industry, for example timber and wood products.. in a commodity market that is an old, established market.. profit and economic expansion that occurs in other aspects of the economy do not reach the economics of the timber. In other words, newly minted millionaires by stock offering and corporate employment in the cell phone industry, do not move the needle on the core parts of the old, commodity timber products. Public news and government statements act as if there is "one economy" that is doing well or not doing well, but this is superficial .. trade goods transacted in the US dollar are sort of linked; trade of goods and services under a unified set of laws like USA interstate commerce laws are sort of linked.. but in Truth, there are winners and losers each year, and that extends to whole market segments, too..
This is a long introductory statement to say that.. just because landlords in Santa Clara County California are driving Porches, or ex-FAANG digital nomads count their money in units of $100k, does not at all mean that big, stable companies and their owners and investors, are seeing the growth that others nearby are seeing.. SO .. how to "catch up" when you are an big brand food company? raise prices.. "greedflation" .. but its not just greed, its a distribution system of profits.. this is an old situation. Stock markets are supposed to ameliorate this friction but not perfectly.. young Turks want Lambos, not fairness.
There have been sarcastic articles about medical doctors that are envious of stock brokers because the doctors cant buy the biggest houses anymore.. but it also includes a local Mexican restaurant going broke on labor and food costs, while Lambos drive by on their way to the airport.. source: personal musing
Unless the three chains have common major shareholders and/or together dominate the bulk of the market and collude in the illusion of sales and price cutting.
The school of macroeconomics believes as a core tenet that workers benefit from gaining efficiency through increased wages, as economics believes that the marketplace is fair and reflective of reality. However, corporations no longer pass efficiency gains to workers, which has undercut that key tenet of the macroeconomic model and thus threatens a basic assumption: that the government can lower inflation without regulating that banks loan out excess reserves or that corporate efficiency gains be paid to workers rather than to shareholders.
Critically, they believe that anything that raises the wages per hour will raise inflation, because their model fails to recognize that corporations have a Profit Level that is stickier than the macro Price Level. Graphing the real profit level versus the real price level of American corporations over the past eighty years would put it into stark contrast, and no existing lever held by the FOMC can influence that.
Only intolerable to current leaders policy ideas like, and this is drastic to convey it clearly, “impose a tax on earnings in excess of 3% real (inflation-adjusted) profits at 100%, due quarterly, to be paid out as a nationwide quarterly basic income”, would help reduce Profit Level to the target of 3% and thus pass efficiency gains to workers. This example explicitly carves off excess profits from domestic GDP efficiency gains that are not being repaid to workers and repays it to domestic households. It would crater the speculative-unprofitable VC market overnight, because sale of a firm for profit not distributed to its workers would be miserably unprofitable for the investor-gambler’s earnings — but the carrot on the stick is that if businesses simply lower their Profit Level, which they can easily do by paying higher wages, then they get to keep more of their profits and the macroeconomic imbalance corrects itself.
It’s of course also possible businesses would choose to lower prices rather than pay workers more, as prices as much less sticky than wages, which would directly reduce both Profit Level and Price Level in lockstep and creating positive supply and demand shocks across the marketplace as the previously-held efficiency gains shake out into higher basic income, higher wages, and/or lower prices.
Arguments that this would increase inflation do not hold water, as those efficiency gains were already priced into inflation when they occurred (or else the efficient market hypothesis itself is disproven, demonstrating the need for more invasive policy of this sort). Redistributing that resulting purchasing power from businesses to households has a net zero macroeconomic impact.
Some tax code finessing would need to be done to deal with e.g. Amazon’s manipulation of Profit Level to keep it at 0% in order to mask true gains, which under this model would need to be labeled a ‘for the primary purpose of’ tax avoidance scheme by IRS auditors, though I would tend to suggest taxing research at a fraction of the excess Profit Level tax, since research is a necessary step in having efficiency gains - but not when it’s used to avoid paying any of a firm’s efficiency gains back to workers as wages.
When you deal with a wide variety of people, constraints, etc you develop processes to deliver output. The DMV is that way for a reason, sidewalks get made a particular way for a reason
And that’s that, you don’t rethink it every time. It’s all transactional. human APIs interfacing with other human APIs
It’s a long cry from the old timey village where you had people: Bob was the only baker, and your neighbor. You also need his help to shovel your driveway. But he needs your help to make house repairs and get eggs from your chickens. If you don’t care then you have longer term personal consequences.
That’s not the case today - if you don’t care and deliver subpar experiences, people rant then move on to their next transaction and you to yours. You aren’t affected one bit in the long run. (Assuming people don’t have a choice - if they do then you do care just enough to get the sale)
I turned out OK in public school, but I was held back at different points, particularly in math, because I (and a few others) were too far ahead of the other kids. We literally had to repeat an entire year of content at one point. Kudos to the teachers who enabled & fostered that, but shame on the school system for not continuing to support. I'm pretty sure one of my classmates gave up on academics at that moment (he never really excelled again like he used to).
I'd like my kids to be free to follow their curiosities. It's definitely work to homeschool but for us, it may be worth it.
I attended a corporate training on harassment where it said you can’t say “all hands” because it’s disrespectful toward people without hands. Use “town hall” instead.
On one hand, sure it’s an easy substitution to make. On the other hand, who decides these things? How does this affect our company? Do people without hands actually care? It all adds up and it’s wearisome like PG says, all these rules and you just try to avoid stepping on one.
I find this highly highly suspect as an anecdote without some supporting evidence
A quick search suggests this is a bit of a running meme used to discredit and poke fun at such trainings rather than something you’ve honestly experienced.
It attempts to replace, or offer alternatives to, offensive language in IT. For example "dummy variable" is under the category of "Ableist language" in the website and should be replaced with the term "placeholder value". "master" and "slave" are other examples of language that, apparently, need to get phased out.
I don't see the problem with the comment that you responded to. It's not surprising to me.
> I don't see the problem with the comment that you responded to. It's not surprising to me.
The problem is that you provide other examples and then extrapolate from there that the original comment could be true. However, whether or not you believe it could be true is not serious evidence that it is.
Yes, offering alternative wording to offensive language is a real thing. But notice that the OP is asserting that a facially silly example is real without any support beyond a claim of personal experience. What should matter to you is whether it is real or not as opposed to whether it is surprising or not.
Fake silly examples like this are meant to sit on the line between believable and absurd specifically to make certain ideas seem ridiculous. Making up silly examples of real things is a specific technique to undermine them. It is a propaganda tool not a good faith attempt at dialogue.
So the story is highly suspect because ..... ? Because the author didn't provide you with evidence on a message board, in order to pre-emptively defend himself against your scrutiny? Because of some unrelated episode where somebody else fabricated a story as a form of propaganda? And you think that justifies your belief that the story is fake? Right. Good luck with your future conversations.
I was obviously speaking on its plausibility.
>The problem is that you provide other examples and then extrapolate from there
Oh man that is wild. As soon as I added subway surfer, it became so much easier to keep clicking the simulation button. I was watching that random video and don’t even notice I keep clicking.
This was fun. Personally I liked sabian more, the cymbals sounded brighter and bolder to me. Zildjians were more dull - maybe the ones I used in school band / drum instructors were so old!
I’m surprised this article merits 700+ comments. Why y’all engage with such drivel?
It’s well established that disruptive technologies don’t appear to have any serious applications, at first. But they get better and better, and eventually they take over.
PG talks about how new technologies seem like toys at first, the whole Innovator Dilemma is about this…so well established within this community.
Just ignore it and figure out where the puck is moving toward.
How is this only coming to light now? Given the pervasiveness of this I'm surprised there wasn't a single tip that the media could've picked up on. Or maybe there was, and they suppressed it.
Given the age range of candidates from Clinton/Bush Jr. to now, and how neither side is worried that their candidates will end eventually up like Reagan, there's a good chance that something behind the scenes is happening.
United States citizens have gotten used to senile white guys making stupid statements as the head of their country. It's embarrassing, but quite natural for most of us at this point.
It's political doublespeak, meant to appeal to people's preferences.
If you take 100 random Trumpers, and ask them the below, you'd likely get yes for each one. but you can obviously see how they contradict each other. so you end up keeping everything the same, and re-allocating funds from one small thing to another.
"Do you want smaller government?"
"Do you want our military to be strong?"
"Do you want to take care of our veterans?"
"Do you want seniors to have their social security and medicare?"
Trump said he won't touch medicare or medicaid. Said he wants to increase military spending and not touch social security. That accounts for around 70% of the budget.
How do you make the massive changes he thinks DOGE needs to make out of the last 30% of the budget?
We're going to have to come up creative ways to get there like means testing for social security. If you're hell bent on "rich people paying their fair share." then how about we means test those rich folks and roll THEIR Social Security benefits down to people who actually need it?
> then how about we means test those rich folks and roll THEIR Social Security benefits down to people who actually need it?
Best way to get otherwise reasonable people to stop supporting social nets. Making a welfare system designed to support only the least well-off is the first step to removing it.
>Best way to get otherwise reasonable people to stop supporting social nets. Making a welfare system designed to support only the least well-off is the first step to removing it.
Isn't that what it already does? I live in a very rich very blue state and even here the qualification criteria for just about any state program more or less exclude any poor household that's trying to get ahead (single mom with a full time job, two employed parents multiple kids or elderly dependents, etc). I know the adjacent less rich less blue states are even worse.
The myth is that social security is a retirement program, not a welfare program. The fear is that if you start means testing it, is no longer an entitlement, and people will perceive it as a welfare program instead of a retirement program, and that will be the beginning of the end.
> Trump said he won't touch medicare or medicaid. Said he wants to increase military spending and not touch social security.
Whenever you see a definitive-sounding Trump quote, take a moment to see if he's also said the exact opposite before you make any conclusions. Here's a good overview of this particular topic: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-m.... He's said he definitely won't cut entitlements, but also that he might, and he tried to make cuts when he was in office but didn't try that hard.
If you're trying to predict what he's going to do you can look at past actions, or what personnel he has put in place. Just reading what he says is useless.
>If you're trying to predict what he's going to do you can look at past actions, or what personnel he has put in place. Just reading what he says is useless.
I'd just like to reflect on how absolutely batshit crazy America is to have voted this guy into the most powerful political position in the world, again!
The whole thing is actually very impressive. Nobody actually knows what he stands for, other than he claims he's the best at it. Even after he did none of it when he was in the same position before!
But why is no one focusing on why food prices are still increasing so much? We're long past shortages of COVID.
It seems there has been an unchecked rise in food supplier oligopolies which allows a small number of companies to collude
-Big potato: https://www.levernews.com/the-rise-of-big-potato/
-Big meat: https://blog.ucsusa.org/karen-perry-stillerman/will-the-bide...
-10 companies own most of the world's food brands: https://www.good.is/this-infographic-shows-how-only-10-compa...
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